How Servility to Reaction is Blended with Playing at Democracy

Written: Written in June 1915
Published:
First published in a special issue, entitled Along the Path of Lenin, of the journal Sputnik Kemmunista, January 1925.
Signed: N. Lenin.
Published according to the manuscript.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[197[4]],
Moscow,
Volume 21,
pages 266-269.
Translated:Transcription\Markup:D. Walters and R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
2002
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.Other Formats:Text
• README

The Cadet collection of articles entitled What Russia
Expects of the War (Petrograd, 1915) is a very useful book for those
wishing to acquaint themselves with the politics of the liberal
intelligentsia. The extent to which our Cadets and liberals have turned
chauvinist is sufficiently known. The present issue of our magazine contains
a special article on this question. However, the assembly, in one hook, of
the works of various Cadets dealing with a variety of subjects bearing on
the war shows concretely the role, not only of the Constitutional-Democratic
Party in present-day imperialist politics, but also of the liberal
intelligentsia as a whole.

The specific function of such an intelligentsia and of this particular
party is to disguise reaction and imperialism with all kinds of democratic
phrases, assurances, sophisms, and subterfuges. The principal article in the
book, entitled “Russia’s Territorial Acquisitions”, is by
Milyukov, the Cadet leader. An article like this could not but set forth the
actual significance of the present war, as far as Russia is
concerned: her desire to seize Galicia, and take part of Poland from Austria
and Germany, and Constantinople, the Straits, and Armenia from Turkey. To
provide a democratic screen, phrases are pronounced about “Slav
unity”, the interests of “small nationalities”, and the
“menace to European peace” presented by Germany. Only in
passing, almost casually as it were, does Milyukov blurt out the truth in
one of his sentences.

“To unite Eastern Galicia with Russia has long been the aim of a
Russian political party which has the backing of
one of the political
parties in Galicia, the so-called Moscowphiles” (p. 49). Exactly! The
Russian party referred to is the most reactionary in Russia, that of
Purishkeviclj and Co., a party of the feudalist-minded landowners led by
tsarism. This “party”—tsarism, the Purishkeviches and the
rest—have long been intriguing both in Galicia and Armenia, etc,
spending millions on bribing the “Moscowphiles”, stopping at no
crime to achieve the lofty aim of “uniting” Eastern Galicia with
Russia. War is a “continuation of the politics” of this
party. The war has been useful in having brushed aside all conventions, torn
away all veils, let the people see the full truth with their own eyes:
preservation of the tsarist monarchy means the need to sacrifice millions of
lives (and thousands of millions of the people’s money so as to
enslave other nations. In practice, it is these policies that have been
backed and served by the Constitutional-Democratic Party.

This truth is unpalatable to the liberal intellectual, who considers
himself humane, freedom-loving, and democratic, and is deeply indignant at
the “calumny” that asserts he is a servant to the
Purishkeviches. The war, however, has shown this “calumny” to be
the most obvious truth.

“Our future can be happy and bright only when international
politics rest on a foundation of justice. Faith in life and its value will
at the same time be the triumph of peace... [215]. Russian women, and with
them all thinking humanity...” hope that “when peace is
concluded, all the belligerent states will simultaneously sign a pact
according to which all international misunderstandings [what a word! As if
what has happened among states were merely “misunderstandings"!]
... shall be settled by arbitration” (216).

“Russian women, who represent the people, will carry into the
people the ideas of Christian love and the brotherhood of nations ...
[216]. [Here the censor has deleted one line and a half, apparently
super-“huinanitarian” expressions such as liberty, equality,
fraternity.] ... Those who know that the writer of these lines can least of
all be suspected of nationalism, do not need to be persuaded that the ideas
propounded here have nothing whatsoever in common
with any kind of national
exclusiveness... [83]. Only now do we realise and actually feel that in
modern wars we are threatened, not by the loss of colonies, however
precious, or by failure to free other nations, but by disintegration of the
state itself...” (147).

Read and give thought to how it is being done! Learn how an
allegedly democratic party conducts its politics, i.e., leads the
masses!

To serve the class of the Purisbkeviches, one must, at the decisive
moments of history (at times when the aims of that class are to be achieved
by war), help that class, or at least “oer no resistance to the
war”. At the same time, one must console the
“people”, the “masses”, and “democracy”,
with fine words such as justice, peace, national liberation. settling
international conflicts by arbitration, the brotherhood of nations, liberty,
reforms, democracy, universal suffrage, etc. In doing so, one must beat
one’s breast in token of sincerity, aver and swear that
“we” “can least of all be suspected of nationalism”,
that “our” ideas have “nothing whatsoever in common with
any kind of national exclusiveness”, and that we are only fighting
against “disintegration of the state"!

The liberal-labour politicians are behaving essentially in exactly the
same way, but in a different environment and in a slightly modified
form. These range from Nasha Zarya, which teaches the people and the
proletariat “to offer no resistance to the war”, continuing with
Nashe Dyelo, which identifies itself with the views of
Messrs. Potresov
and Co. (No. 2, p. 19) and Plekhanov (No. 2, p. 103) and which
reprints without a single dissenting remark similar ideas of Axeirod (No. 2,
pp. 107-10), continuing further with Semkovsky, who battles in Nashe
Slovo and in Izvestia of the Organising Committee against
“disintegration”, to Chkheidze’s group, the Organising
Committee and the Bund, who are fighting tooth and nail against a
“split” (with the Nashe Dyelo group). Moreover, they
all stand for the brotherhood of the workers, peace, internationalism, and
whatever you please; they will sign whatever you wish; they will renounce
“nationalism” millions of times, on the
single and “minor” condition—that “unity”
should not be sundered with that Russian political group which alone (of
the entire company) has some weight and, in journal and newspaper, has
been teaching the workers opportunism, nationalism, and non-resistance to
the war.